Weekly Meeting - Billy Nairn (Power Boat Racing)

Billy Nairn - Powerboat Racing

This was an excellent evening about Billy’s enthusiasm for speed boats and racing.

He graduated to the sport from waterskiing and since then has invested huge amounts of time and cash and risking serious injury to pursue his hobby.

He gave us a fascinating background to the sport with considerable insight into the engineering and how it has progressed from the very dangerous state it was in 20 years ago.

Controlling the ‘trim’ is the key – keeping the propeller just in the water for maximum effect without taking off.  He failed to do this on Windermere in one of his early races and had to be resuscitated and broke his leg.   With safety features being regularly introduced, deaths have fallen from 10-20 5 yrs ago, to a mere handful now!

The racing continues all over the world with a lot in Arabia but also in Africa, Russia and even on the Yangtze River.  Billy raced in the World Powerboat series winning the the President's Cup. This, of course, costs vast amounts of money and whilst many countries will sponsor the entrants the boats themselves cost a basic £130,000 -  and that’s without a propeller!

Billy completed his talk with a few powerboat disaster videos, including one of himself being fished out.  Billy is obviously an extremely successful businessman with a zest for thrills, but I think I'll stick to golf.

Thanks also to Chris for an excellent introduction and Duncan for resuscitating the video display!

A very good evening.

Bob Paterson